Titan was a superhero fortified with the power of God. But instead of using his heavenly gifts to counsel the meek or feed the hungry or shelter the homeless, Titan spent most of his time pummeling giant skeleton monsters and hippie vampires. Like they say, God moves in mysterious ways.

But that’s not totally fair. Titan was never meant to be Mother Teresa’s wingman or a backup singer in the Jonas Brothers band. He was put on this planet to be a warring warrior against evil—an invincible army of one. Says the author: “He had powers granted by God to fight the terrible things that threaten people.” In other words, Titan was God’s way of playing dirty. His mission: destroy evil so good may flourish.

As such, Titan has been around forever. The current incarnation of the divine superhero lived (like Witchblade and Venom) within the body of an 18-year-old kid named Eric Steele. Not surprisingly, the government was desperate to get their hands on the high school senior. Who better to wield such power than the United States military after all?

But the Army was a sneaky bunch. They couldn’t just walk up to Eric’s front door, ring the doorbell, and politely ask for a smidgen of God’s power. Nope, they had to produce their own super soldier to wrest the secrets of Titan away from him. Harnessing the dynamism of God is a complicated business, however. The Army’s unholy lab experiment (codename: Bone) turned out to be an abomination of science and providence. To say their creation was an imperfect replica of Titan was a major understatement.

And so the stage was set for a titanic clash of monsters complete with a generous amount of exclamation marks. When Titan and Bone fought, the earth shook like an overbooked bouncy house. Their clash, says the author, was like “a sickening clap of meat, bone, and metal.” The action scenes, it must be said, are all first-rate.

However, Titan is not a perfect novel by any means. There are consistency problems and questionable writerly decisions throughout. And more than anything, the book is untenably too long. At 499 pages it is thicker than a brick. It deserves an editor with a slashing red pen.

But these criticisms are (somewhat) forgivable. Big chunks of Titan are funny, violent, obscene, gross, horny, sweet, romantic, and emo. If you want a revelation, here it is: the power of God is within us all. And you know what? The Holy Spirit is a pretty awesome superhero.